Recently there is an outcry about someone making a short film based on, and expounding a little on, a free verse poem titled My Choice. That this poem and this film was a response to the spate of rapes in recent years has been ignored completely by those criticising it for advocating western lifestyle, short clothes, et al; and most retorts consist of male choice for rape being equally valid.
Ever since the rapes began to proliferate one had to wonder if the rapes were not merely the inability of the males involved in finding any women to consort with except by assault and force, however pathetic that is - after all the country has been short of women in significant numbers since people realised economic benefits to small families in doing away with daughters, a policy in fact adopted by the government decades ago to curb population that backfired majorly on humanitarian arena on several levels - but something far more sinister and demonic.
Is it an ever looking to west and north copying action of the illiterate or nominally literate, to try to prove they are not short of taliban like control of the land in general and the women specifically, to try and push them back in homes for servitude in kitchen and bed and general slavery?
For that is a common reaction to any such events by the cowards and the weak amongst men and civilisations, telling women not to go out, give up jobs, not be ambitious, not think of themselves. Having dreams counts as negative if you are a woman, and a woman without dreams declares so proudly, or having had them but not realised any states so anyway, meant to be explicitly derogatory towards - and an example set to - a woman who might have suffered a great deal due to having dreams at all, and worked for them.
So the thinking is, better not dream, have no ambitions, better not go work except if your family is starving and your man incapable and if possible not even then, avoid achievements and personal identity, give up your self, sacrifice it to all men and their demands first and general women next, and be happy if you are not raped.
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But it could be worse.
What if this is not merely a publicity seeking populace's effort to have their acts if not names in papers via the cheapest act possible, rape? What if there is an organised systematic effort behind it all?
Could it be that throwing bombs and general terrorist efforts are no longer enough to satisfy those that would destroy a nation with ancient civilisation still alive and flourishing, neither converted nor finished and dead like others?
What if it is a conspiracy from those that are not satisfied killing hundreds of innocent civilians and wish to do worse, by pushing women of India indoors due to terror created by repeated rapes of women that step out?
What if this is a move to destroy all progress and more of India by the simple method of attacking her daughters and mothers, via rape and murder, so education and work and careers of women are the first casualty, and civilisation of India the final? For, no civilisations, no marauders have prospered ever, if their mothers are kept illiterate in slavery and ignorance, barefoot and pregnant as the western phrase goes, or KKK as the forties German diktat by the infamous leader.
What if this is a fascist conspiracy, via taliban, using the publicity hungry ignoramus part of the general populace, of those that cannot achieve but want to see their names up there in print and their faces on television? It might no longer be enough for them to try and get on a camera, whether news or someone's wedding or a film shoot, by forcing their face into the camera?
What if this is the new weapon of terrorist attack, more insidious than pamphlets for false propaganda and more deadly than any nuclear weapons?
Ancient India had women who were not merely free to go about and choose their own consorts, but more - they were learned, experts in their work as equal partners in family, and too, able to use debates and win them in public. Then came a thousand years of colonisation by marauders who invaded and massacred, looted, raped and more. This pushed the women indoors, and effects thereof are still visible in the difference between north India and other parts, culturally in every little detail every day.
It is a horror to envision loss of all India regained in a relatively short time thereafter, by reverting to her own soul.
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Someone has said, civilisations begin with swords and end in violins. This is not an exact quote, because trying to find it rather than going with memory and gist is not worth the effort, but it is true enough. There was a lot more he could have said, but he belonged to a civilisation that was still proud of past swords and not quite there yet with violins, so he did not.
What he did not say is that while achievements are superior to destruction of others achievements, lesser people take solace in doing the latter since they are plagued by jealousy and either unsure of matching them or sure of achieving nothing else whatsoever.
Rape is not very different from massacre of civilisations. Any male confident of finding plenty of attractive mates without lifting a finger will strut along like a peacock, rarely deigning to look at the crowd following him, while those jealous of him and full of hatred for women who would not look at them are the ones that will try to force those women in every way possible - telling them what to do and what not to do, telling other men to control the women, physically assaulting them, raping, and blaming everything on the victims of their crimes.
While all along the fact is the so called men are not qualified for the epithet - for their biggest qualification for the title of loser is their inability to control their own selves. Their lower selves, lower in every way, are controlling them, and their minds and hearts are taken over by the lower instincts of killing others who might be superior while their bodies are dominated by the nether parts.
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The short film gone viral is attacked from all sides - on television and internet alike - post the first stunned shock of "wow!", with most people finding a word here or a shot there to attack conveniently. They claim it is all about wearing less clothes and being sexually not quite what any society approves of, and freedom should be about education and choices should be about being an astronaut.
Those are better, superior options, yes. Why don't most men make those choices, since they have all the choices?
And therein lies the whole point. They have the choices, and make what choices they can. Women are told to make only those choices everyone else will be ok with, which rather makes it a lack of choices and freedom, lack of personhood.
If society, men, women, granted personhood to women, who will take up the slavery without compensations that women's lives largely consist of?
Hence the quaking of the society with fear - for if she today can wear what she likes and make other choices that she wants, and realises this, tomorrow no one is going to be around to pick up after him, to serve him, to take up the slack in providing for his family including him and his parents and siblings and friends and colleagues and other social connections for any amount of time of his and their choice, no one is going to be available to him and his to take out their frustrations on, whether by physical assault or starvation or forbidding her to meet her people and do anything she likes, or by murder when the frustration goes too far.
And there are no repercussions while she does not matter because she is less valuable than a pet that has been paid for, since she in fact paid for the privilege of this slavery, with her life and mind given over and if she is finished off society will not even shed a crocodile tear, but will offer more women with dowries who are more than willing (or those that are offering them are willing to offer them) in taking the place of one murdered.
A male in mid seventies who has beaten his wife to death with an interim of a time when she suffered the same injuries US footballers do with the same consequences, has all the society to help him celebrate his wedding to a willing partner as young as he can get, usually a couple of decades younger if not more, as long as he is willing to allow it. A woman in early twenties is told she would find no one unless she settles, and fast, into a life of lifelong servitude without escape, and far worse if she is not well behaved about it.
And if she persists, in going out and choosing education and work and self reliance, there is always rape and murder.
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The video is attacked on the same basis rape is excused - she was exciting males, wearing short clothes, culturally improper in behaviour, and basically, asking for it. But then a woman covered from neck down to ankles is not safe nor is one too old or too young - infants have been raped as have been old women. Old, not as in fifties, but as old as eighties. Patients in hospitals unable to move or speak have been raped, as have in fact dead bodies.
When does society awake and tell males, it is rape that is evil? When do males inculcate their sons in the real secrets of humanity, so far taught women but left as a choice to take up or not as far as males go?
When does society realise there is no excuse for rape and assault, physical or verbal or emotional, and it merely exposes inferiority of the assaulter, not their superior physical power?
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When wolves begin attacking farms, a farmer might try to find better guard dogs, electric fences, locks and so on. Lock up his fowl in secure airy housing and penning up his sheep in secure pens with guard dogs. What the farmer, or average householder, does not do is to lock up the babies and children - he gets a shotgun and hunts down the threat, and if not by himself then by collecting the village.
For locking up the children is not the answer - the wolf that can get them in your garden can very well enter through the window and get them in their beds, and humans do not lock up their own in secure cages.
When women are being assaulted, they are told explicit;y or implicitly to no longer go out without adequate male protection, no longer seek education or work or enjoyment, but stay at home and serve their lords and masters the males, and if they are kidnapped from home then serve the new lords and masters the kidnappers or buyers. In whatever way the lords and masters choose to demand.
When is it going to be clear that in this the women are being treated more like live property to serve alive or dead, and less like humans that they are? What else is slavery but tolerating this attitude?
What after all is adequate protection, if those that attack are precisely those that one is counting on as one's fellow humans, relatives, friends, partners, colleagues, protectors?
And seriously, which total moron is going to state on penalty of his own life that no woman was ever attacked, raped, murdered, in her own home while she presented herself as completely dressed as possible, from neck down to ankles, or even more, having one's face covered as well?
Anyone who is so foolish as to claim this, is free to swear it on bible and all other holy books, and on all possible gods, on pain of his own blood.
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The film is built on words of a poem and has 99 women who are shot to make up the video footage, and talks about choices. It is not about demanding approval or about telling everyone what to do. It IS about a woman who has a mind and a soul, and every right to make her own choices, right or wrong, and freedom to do so. And that is every woman.
Reducing it to convenient labels of short clothes and immoral behaviour is merely a convenient way to victimise those that assert the freedom, the rights, the right to make choices, the equality of souls and minds.
And that is no different from those that defend rapes with assertions of men being men or boys being boys, or comparing the situation to meat and dogs, or asserting that women who behave properly don't get raped. They do, but then they are conveniently forgotten.
It is only humans that do this to their own females. Every other species alive protects its females. Are humans on top rung of evolution, in attempting to finish of the females of the species one way or another? Is this about extinction being a need of humans?
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Everyone familiar with evolution is aware that apes are further along in evolution than the equines, but few bother to think it over and realise the implications, else they would not brag about nether equipment and difference vis a vis females of the species. For gorillas lack what donkeys routinely, publicly display - donkeys have not only excellent equipment, it borders on two forelegs and a hind tripod when in heat.
This should be a further argument for those that do not realise the relevance, the significance of one's head and heart being far up above the nether end of the torso, and not as connected to the heart as a woman's body in its internal structure - a woman carries a baby under her heart, connected to her whole being, and it is only a male that can conveniently disclaim his own nether parts as if they were not his own sole and exclusive responsibility, but that of every woman on the planet.
But a bank robber is not excused for robbing a bank even though the premises are meant for business of money, nor is a hungry man excused for robbing a place that sells food, much less a home or another person's wallet.
Being unable to control one's own nether parts, for whatever reasons, is no excuse for assaulting another person, however hot or provocative, either physically or verbally or in other twisted ways. Nor is it a justification for any crime.
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Civilisations that vanished due to onslaught of other civilisations were more advanced, not less, and the marauders more primitive, albeit unable to see it, and hence the assaults. Humanity as a whole needs to evolve to where wolves are not given free range while evolved humans are caged in homes or concentration camps and reservations and reduced land areas while wolves keep migrating out from designated forests and into human civilisations and cities.
It is time for farmers to take up shotguns and nets to trap wolves, and push them back, It is time humanity evolved to where it grows into light, rather than allowing humanity to sink back to primitive with fangs bared and babies caged for safety.
If the latter comes to pass, forget beauty and grace, forget music and all other achievements and blessings from above. The only defence for women who do not escape assault and rape even in home in complete accord with all norms prescribed would be to turn around, wear beards and moustaches and even horns, use horrible stinking sprays or even poisonous ones, and if that is not enough, carry weapons of assault - always available in black market or in kitchens of one's homes - and use them when felt threatened.
Or if none of it works and women are still assaulted, nature will let women perish and thereby let humanity go extinct, for humanity that does not defend its own women on par with other half and designates them to servitude does not deserve to survive.
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